Sometimes it seems that with the stresses can not do anything. Invoices will still be coming, in the day will not be more hours work and home duties will always take a lot of time and effort. However, one can control the stress to a much greater extent than it suggests. The very awareness that the best you can start to manage your life and how you feel, is the foundation of stress management. To do this, you must take responsibility for many things: his thoughts, emotions, and schedule their own ways of settling problems. Stress management starts with identifying their causes, and it is not as easy as it might seem at first glance.

Identify causes of stress

The true causes of stress are not always obvious, and people can easily overlook their own thoughts, feelings and actions that lead to increased stress. For example, many people are constantly worried about the deadlines at work, but not everyone knows exactly what is the real reason for this - the extremely hard work or a habit of constantly postponing things until the last moment. To identify the causes of stress, you need to look at their habits and excuses:

• Do you think any stress temporary ("I just have a lot to do right now, and I can handle them all back to normal"), though they do not remember the last time I can relax without worrying about current affairs?
• Do you think the stress integral, natural part of his life ("How many can remember, I was constantly busy a hundred things at once"), or his personality ("I'm just a pretty impulsive person, that's all")?
• You blame in causing stress other people or external circumstances?

In answering these questions, you will be able to understand their own attitude to stress, as well as see its true causes, which are always somehow connected with the fact, as you organize your life, like one of those or other events, and so on. Remember that while you do not take responsibility for stress, you can not manage it.

Keep a journal of stress

This blog will help you understand what factors cause stress on a regular basis, which play a role stressors only in individual cases, as well as - in what circumstances you are better or worse to cope with stress. Wrote in his diary the following:

• What was the cause of stress (if you are not sure, make a note of the alleged cause);
• How did you feel under stress - mentally and physically;
• How do you respond to stress;
• What helped you to cope with stress.

Pay special attention to the ways of dealing with stress that you are using now - are they, in your opinion, healthy or unhealthy, productive or unproductive? Unfortunately, many people relieve stress in ways that yield only temporary results, but in the long term can lead to new problems. Among these methods:

• Smoking;
• Alcohol abuse;
• Overeating and malnutrition;
• Diversion via the TV or computer - it can take several hours per day;
• Withdrawal from family and friends;
• Admission sedatives;
• Drug use;
• Procrastination;
• Excessive sleep;
• Creating a schedule in which the busy every minute of the day that there was no time and effort to think about the most pressing problems that cause a lot of stress;
• Attempt to take out accumulated stress on other people - ridicule, anger, physical violence.

Constructive ways to manage stress

There are four main strategies for stress management relating to the two categories:

• Change the situation - the avoidance of the stressor and change the situations that cause stress;
• Changing the reaction - adaptation to stressors and the adoption of a stressor.

Avoiding stressors

Of course, not all stressors can be avoided, moreover, stress-free life would be incomplete. However, you can and should avoid factors that cause needless stress and unconstructive.

• Learn to say "no." Do not take unnecessary obligation only to please others, do not act to its detriment, to help another person in the cases with which he can handle himself. You do not have to be "cute" - better when it is necessary, get tough, than to suffer from chronic stress.
• Avoid people who cause you stress. These may be people who are too demanding to you that lower your self-esteem, you take out your stress. Even if it is your family, do everything to communicate with them as little as possible.
• Change the environment. If the evening news causes you anxiety, do not turn on the TV after work, if you are very annoying traffic jams, driving on public transport or by bicycle (if working from home is not too far).
• Give the schedule in order. It is possible that you specify in the schedule so much to do, how physically unable to perform in a day. Leave only the most important things, and pay all my attention to them.

Change the situation

• Let's vent their feelings, do not hold them in yourself. Of course, not in every situation you can afford it, but you should be able to regularly reprimanded, or stress can lead to serious psychological problems.
• Agree to compromise whenever possible.
• Be persistent. Do not be afraid to stand your ground when you need it. The process of defending their interests, too, can be stressful, but it is not comparable with the stress that comes with the thought that you have not done anything in a situation when you had to bang his fist on the table.
• Learn to manage your time. Poor time management is a common source of stress.

Adapting to the stressor

• Change the view. Look for the positive aspects of stressful situations - they are almost always, they need only to see.
• Learn to see the future. How important is that now causes you stress, a month, a year, ten years?
• Adjust your standards. Striving for perfection inevitably leads to stress. Determine what the results of their work can be considered good enough, and aspire to such a result.

The adoption of the stressor

• Do not try to control the uncontrollable. And do not waste energy on regrets about what you can not control what is not in your power. Instead, focus on the fact that it is amenable to your will.
• Do not forget about the bright side. It is even very difficult events - everything that happens to a person, it is a lesson. "What does not kill us makes us stronger" - this is the case as long as the person himself does not allow any situation to break themselves.
• Farewell. Misdeeds of others, as well as your own, too, belong to the sphere of what can not be controlled. If you can not forgive them, you will spend your whole life energy on experience about these offenses.

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